


Night; Interrupted

by sequence_fairy



Category: Bleach
Genre: Angst, Canon-Compliant (ish), F/M, Smut, post-686
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-11-11
Updated: 2016-11-11
Packaged: 2018-08-30 09:31:46
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,085
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8527957
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sequence_fairy/pseuds/sequence_fairy
Summary: Some wounds never fully heal, and some nights are harder than others.





	

**Author's Note:**

  * For [blancsanglier](https://archiveofourown.org/users/blancsanglier/gifts).



> For Erin. Whose birthday it was, and for whom this angst was written.

The scales have never been tipped in his favour, the odds have never been on his side, and goddammit, he knows this isn’t how it was meant to happen, he knows this will break everything to pieces, he knows he is peeling back layers of himself that he cannot re-attach, he knows that he is unravelling the threads of this finely wrought illusion, and he will pay for this wanton disregard, and yet –

He has done enough, he’s been through _enough_ , does he not deserve this? Is he not entitled to some small happiness after all of this? Is he not _owed_ some satisfaction?

Here she is, standing in the middle of the clinic, looking up at him the way she always does, soft and beautiful and so, _so_ dangerous. He can feel himself moving, but cannot stop himself – she leans, almost imperceptibly, into his touch, and Ichigo is lost. This small sign, this tiny movement of her cheek into the palm of his hand? It is enough for him to know that she is not as unaffected as she pretends to be.

Because even now – even as he’s backing Rukia up against the wall in the clinic, even now as she’s kissing him back, even now as she’s letting him lift her so he can bury his face in the side of her neck and drive himself home into the slick warmth at her core – she’s cold fire and dry ice, her eyes closed tightly so he can’t read what she’s thinking; so he is flying blind, so he feels like the only one buffeted by the gale force winds that tear him to shreds in her arms.

She tightens around him and Ichigo loses his rhythm, stuttering through his climax as she arches and trembles through her own. She says nothing, only bites her lip until it is bloodless. He bites back her name.

(Ichigo bites back a lot of things that have no place being said aloud.)

Words pile up in his mouth and lodge in his throat and they burn and stick and suddenly he’s pulling away from Rukia, leaving her to slide gracelessly down the wall while he stumbles back, trying to breathe.

Rukia lands in a heap on the floor, skirt rucked up around her hips, legs akimbo and Ichigo struggles for air. His chest is heavy with panic, and he sinks to the floor with her, knees hitting cold tile with the bruising force of his body weight behind them.

It takes longer than he thinks he can possibly stand for Rukia to get her feet back under her and for him to feel the featherlight press of her hands on his shoulders. Her touch is grounding, but the panic doesn’t ease and Ichigo’s throat is closing around all the things he can’t (won’t) say. He stares, unseeing, at the swathe of light purple fabric that makes up her dress.

“Ichigo,” she says, and Ichigo looks up. It’s the first thing she’s said since she arrived. Her voice is low and husky and Ichigo wonders whether that’s from too much or too little speaking. Her eyes, though, hold volumes, and Ichigo has become an exemplary student in the school of what Rukia doesn’t say. All of the words choking him turn to dust in his mouth. He can breathe again. Her cheeks are still flushed. She leans in, and presses her mouth to his, but before he can kiss her back, she’s pulling away.

Ichigo opens his eyes to find the cool, shadowed darkness of his bedroom. Beside him, Orihime sleeps on, undisturbed by the jackhammer beat of his heart or the heaving gasp of his breath. Ichigo brings a hand to his mouth. He can still feel Rukia’s lips on his.

The panic sinks and settles into his gut, and it churns as he remembers the dream - just a _dream_.

Ichigo sits up, careful not to jostle Orihime, and swings his legs over the side of the bed before dropping his head into his hands.

Just a dream, he tells himself, and then again, so he’ll believe his own lie. Just a dream.

Only a vivid - and altogether vicious - imagining, but oh _god_ , it had felt so _real_. The heat of her, the wet press of her lips on his skin, the sting of her nails in his shoulders, the way she’d shivered in his arms, the taste of her skin under his mouth –

All he has now are memories – the spill of moonlight across her bed, the sound of his name when he’d made her come that first night (he’s still proud of that, still proud that his teenage fumblings made her come apart in rolling waves and that he got to witness that exquisite moment where she forgot all of her nobility and became a live wire under his hands), the way she’d grinned at him when she’d finally caught her breath and Ichigo had literally seen stars when she rolled them over. He still thinks about the wet heat of her mouth around him in the dark.

He hasn’t seen her in years; hasn’t felt the give and press of her flesh against his in a decade, and yet –

It’s like she’s embedded under his skin – like she was a barbed arrow, snagged under his heart – every time he breathes, he feels it; the tugging ache of what was, and what isn’t now. He takes a deep breath, ignores the ever-present pain, and gets up. He steals out of his marriage bed, past the room where his child sleeps, down the stairs and slips out the sliding door into the courtyard.

They made the right choice, he thinks, and underlines the thought with thick, black ink for good measure.

(They made the _only_ choice. It was their happiness or everyone else’s. It was their forever or everyone else’s.)

(There was no choice really. He’d known, just as she had, that the last time would be the _last_ time and he’d held her until sunrise, neither of them asleep, both of them desperately and silently wishing morning would never come.)

Ichigo stands in his (their) tiny garden. The air is frigid and the ground is dusted with snow. He is barefoot and bare-armed and he welcomes the bite of the air on his skin. Ichigo looks up at the moon. He looks up at it’s barely-there sickle in the sky and whispers words he hasn’t said aloud in more than ten years.

“Happy birthday, Rukia.”


End file.
